This invention relates to hand-held vacuum cleaners and in particular to a hand-held vacuum cleaner having a selectively separable bag assembly that is effectively engaged in sealing relationship to the housing of the cleaner.
AC powered hand-held vacuum cleaners have become increasingly popular in the past several years. Such cleaners ar particularly useful where conventional larger size vacuum cleaners such as large canister or upright types are inconvenient for the user. Such hand-held vacuum cleaners are particularly useful in cleaning stairs and furniture. Examples of these AC powered hand-held vacuum cleaners are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,700,428 and 4,891,861.
Hand-held vacuum cleaners of the type described typically employ a removable bag assembly for collecting the dirt drawn into the cleaner with the working air. Such bag assemblies must be periodically removed from the housing of the vacuum cleaner to allow the user to clean the dirt from the dirty air collector bag of the bag assembly. A failure to routinely clean the dirt from the dirty air collector bag reduces the operating performance of the cleaner and may result in clogging of the working air flow channels of the cleaner.
To encourage routine cleaning of the bag assembly, the bag assembly should be designed so that it is easily removed from the vacuum cleaner's housing and also easily replaced thereon. Furthermore, any seals employed between the bag assembly and the housing should be extremely effective to prevent dirt entrained air from bypassing the dirty air collector bag.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide a hand-held vacuum cleaner having a selectively removable bag assembly which can be readily removed from the cleaner, cleaned, and replaced thereon without creating any significant discomfiture to the user of the cleaner.